OLDaily

[link: 6 Hits] Nancy White explores the different flavours of collaboration: "It is the collaboration chocolate confection. There is that perfect truffle center, rich and dark (the team). There is the robe of chocolate, dusting of cocoa, the company of other truffles nearby (the community). Then there is the fantastic universe of chocolate, the breadth and dizzying depth of possibility (the network)." All very well, but when is each appropriate? I have suggested that some are more appropriate when an emotional connection is needed, while others are more so when an intellectual connection is needed. Which is why I have questioned the need for things like teams and groups in learning. [Tags: Networks] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

[link: 1 Hits] George Siemens continues his conversion to business consultant: "To survive, all organizations need to embrace experimentation - an ongoing 'blood in the corporate veins' type of experimentation. Policy-induced change can be effective, but most often, if we follow the lessons of evolving organisms, developing corporate competence progressively is the best approach for long-term sustained change." If I were writing a corporate management bible, I would write it very differently. It's all very well to teach managers about networks, but I don't think they're really interested in networks. They're interested, if you will, in making friends and influencing people. Well, mostly the latter. Alas, poor Carnegie. But when you have to give up power, how do you gain influence? Time for the Lao Tzu. [Tags: Australia, Networks] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

[link: 3 Hits] The battle against the Blackboard patent has opened up on a new front as the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) "has filed a formal request with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for re-examination of Blackboard's e-Learning patent." The request was filed on behalf of Sakai, Moodle and ATutor. More coverage from CNet, which notes, "The announcement of the re-examination request comes just two days after the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments about what makes an invention too "obvious" to warrant protection." [Tags: Blackboard, Copyright and Patent Issues, United States] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

[link: 1 Hits] Funny. Blackboard is presenting "e-learning 2.0" at Educa Berlin. "It's not a problem that companies get into this, it's healthy for the community. But re-inventing the tools and indirectly claiming them as their own or otherwise representing them in a light that they are 'eLearning 2.0' or 'social bookmarking' trying to cash in on the hype, is totally ridiculous." [Tags: Online Learning, Blackboard] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

[link: 3 Hits] Scott Wilson comments on Hodgins's The Future of Metadata (posted here yesterday) and in a short post levels a barrage of (well-deserved) criticism at the piece. He writes, "There is some good stuff in here on future work, but to be honest it would be better off ditching most of the legacy rather than trying to convince us of what a wonderful success its been, and all this new stuff is logical progression. After all, anyone talking about 'secondary metadata' or 'usage metadata' a few years ago was being scoffed at by the LOMerati. What we needed was more, even higher quality, expert-produced metadata, whatever the cost!" Quite right. And I also agree with his comment on competencies (c.f. my comments on Rob Koper): "As we've discovered in TenCompetence and XCRI this is an absolute quagmire, and we can achieve more of practical benefit with reasonable effort by using latent semantic analysis and regular text labels than using ontologies and schemas to try to pin down human capability in all its dimensions." [Tags: Schemas, Metadata, Semantic Web, Ontologies] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

[link: Hits] In a nutshell: "The growth of online higher education in China has been accompanied by concerns and has encountered some significant problems. Some of these concerns and problems are rooted in the cultural, political, economical, and technological realities of higher education in China. Others reflect the struggle between tradition and innovation." [Tags: China] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

[link: Hits] I think the author both understates the value of public perception (and confuses it with marketing) and overstates the value of the peer reviewed publication. But the straw man question - "choose (1) to have their work published in the premier journal in their field or (2) to have that work regularly come up on the first screen in an appropriate Google search" - is intriguing, and while I don't think even open access will resurrect what passes for quality in academic journals, and while I don't agree that "cpublic opinion is hardly swayed by the relative degrees of prestige accorded to various publishers" I agree witht eh conclusion that the situation is much improved through open access. [Tags: Open Access, Books and eBooks, Academic Journals, Academic Publications, Marketing, Google, Academics and Academia, Quality] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Projects&Collaborations
Browse through the thousands of links in my knowledge base
sorted according to topic category, author and
publication.

Research
Browse through the thousands of links in my knowledge base
sorted according to topic category, author and
publication.

I want and visualize and aspire toward a system of society and learning where each person is able to rise to his or her fullest potential without social or financial encumberance, where they may express themselves fully and without reservation through art, writing, athletics, invention, or even through their avocations or lifestyle.

Where they are able to form networks of meaningful and rewarding relationships with their peers,
with people who share the same interests or hobbies, the same political or religious affiliations - or different
interests or affiliations, as the case may be.

This to me is a society where knowledge and learning are public goods, freely created and shared,
not hoarded or withheld in order to extract wealth or influence.

This is what I aspire toward, this is what I work toward. - Stephen Downes